Backlash Against Vail Resorts

[Jax]

[Boosh]

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoo...-overcrowding/

good read about the ongoing saga... seems like a lot of media outlets have now run stories about the Vail Fail this year.

I joked with a buddy of mine about shorting their stock at the beginning of December.. article says it's down ~27% from Nov. to Jan., kinda wish I had taken that option...

[Hacksaw]

I know him well and he's hardly a jerk. I also support removing frontage road parking.

A lot of VR employees park there. Its a stupid idea to remove the frontage road parking.

[The SnowShow]

A lot of VR employees park there. Its a stupid idea to remove the frontage road parking.

Next they’ll remove it and provide no free parking to employees. Make ‘em all bus. Fuck VR.

[SkiBall]

Next they’ll remove it and provide no free parking to employees. Make ‘em all bus. Fuck VR.

West Vail usually pretty full and the employee pass lot is half full. Apparently they don’t mind the bus that much over the “cheap” parking option.

[Skistack]

I can see Vail requiring reservations for a limited number of spots per day to their regular pass, and adding a premium, no reservations required pass.

Step one - Create a shortage of your product.
Step two - Offer a solution to the problem you created.
Step three - Profit!!

[chicken feathers]

I don't know if this had been posted here yet...
Paging Bmills...

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2022/...ed-management/

I wonder how much people have to throw down for a season pass there these days assuming they don't buy the full epic pass?

[skaredshtles]

Vail owns 3 properties in fucking OHIO?

[Core Shot]

If the forecast is a hudge dump

Do not go to an epic resort.

It will not be epic

[Benny Profane]

Vail owns 3 properties in fucking OHIO?

Re: the purchase of Peak resorts. It was such a blunder. And it's on Katz. He really fucked up. They have no clue how to manage those disparate properties, and, they're doing absolutely the wrong thing, grouping then all together like a bunch of Starbucks. They suck.

[SkiNowWorkLater]

This is going well. In a way, it's good to see. This sort of disfunction can't last forever. Or, can it?

It's much worse at a few of their Eastern hills. Essentially, after this storm Friday, thousands of people stood in line with important chairs not functioning.

https://www.parkrecord.com/news/park...-to-city-hall/

From this article:

Michael Kaplan, who lives in Old Town, recalled waiting 42 minutes in a line at PCMR to purchase a hot dog that cost $9.

“They seem to care little about our community” and the guest experience at PCMR, Kaplan said.

This is an excellent troll by the Aspen Ski Co CEO

[skysos]

I don't know if this had been posted here yet...
Paging Bmills...

https://unofficialnetworks.com/2022/...ed-management/

I wonder how much people have to throw down for a season pass there these days assuming they don't buy the full epic pass?

I'm amazed that people will buy a season pass to ski a hill with a maximum vertical of 264', and then stand in line waiting to get lifted to the top of said hill.

[VTskibum]

I'm amazed that people will buy a season pass to ski a hill with a maximum vertical of 264', and then stand in line waiting to get lifted to the top of said hill.

Better than sitting on the couch? I get a bunch of days w/ my kids at my 500' hill b/c it's 40 minutes away. Yes it pales in comparison to bigger mountains, but skiing is still fun. Plus mountain bike rides generally suck this time of year.

Saw on their social media that Jack Frost (small 600' PA hill) is going to be limiting day pass sales, which is welcome news as it's understaffed and lift lines out of control. Monday of MLK w/ 12" overnight they only had 1 double and 1 triple running for the 'good' half of the mountain.

[Shredhead]

I predicted the VR meltdown and am quite surprised it took this long.
The price reduction and overwhelming response, was the final straw that broke their back.

They’ve got to be discussing next years prices right now. Can’t really raise them now.

[Name Redacted]

They’ve got to be discussing next years prices right now. Can’t really raise them now.

Why not?

[The SnowShow]

Watch, everyone will go over to Ikon next season.

[Shredhead]

Tons of bad press, lots of disgruntled pass holders, already considering other options.They will have lower pass sales, even if they keep the price the same.
Raise it, the drop will be huge, their stock tanks.

[Benny Profane]

Watch, everyone will go over to Ikon next season.

That's my worry.

[MakersTeleMark]

A lot of VR employees park there. Its a stupid idea to remove the frontage road parking.

You're confusing the south and north frontage roads.

[Benny Profane]

Vail loses Vail. Or forgot the annual "presents" to the right people.

https://www.vaildaily.com/news/eagle...ts-at-retreat/

[fastfred]

vail is going to stay the course because all of this is the result of covid
has nothing to do with low wages, housing, lack of on site middle management that is given the boot years ago, and total dysfunction in Broomfield
in late march we will be provided a press release from the katz amsterdam foundation about how they gave a million bucks to some sham charity

the biggest gaper fest out there is tubing and vail can't even get it together to open the tubing hill of course the article is spun nicely it's not our fault there is just not the demand to open it
but tubing is huge with gapers
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/vail-...021-22-season/

massive exodus to ikon next year get ready to wait in line and over share the slopes

[summit]

So many problems, super passes, mega corps, skiing as RE dev, STRs, COVID, the great resignation, remote workers, and more. Vails model is a huge part of that problem. Let me explain:

The Pass Wars

Ski resorts and ski hills are different. All of you know this. Season pass wars of 1995-2005 killed many ski hills. Super passes that followed have killed the ski experience of the past. So not only did you have basically no American resorts opening in the last 25 years, many closed in the highly competitive western market areas.

Vail Resorts changed the way the industry ran. Instead of a pass being something that was hard to get, you had to physically show up and get it during the off season to make sure out-of-towners bought day tickets, instead jack the day tickets but make passes cheap and easy. Why? To lock in the destination skiers to your mountains and thus your lucrative lodging and services. The lift pass is the loss leader, though not quite as they still pocket plenty of pass money on unused or barely used passes, and they get all that money up front.

Day passes vs Season Passes

Passes also locked in the day skier and weekend warriors. People bought passes to reserve the option to come up. In 1987, a 12” day at Aspen Highlands enticed people to pay $35 for a day ticket (they scandalously raised the prices causing an uproar) or two. Today, no Epic holder is going to pay Aspen $200 for a day to drive past 4 Epic resorts that have $0 of marginal cost even if Vail has one third the snow total. This is just an example.

What to do with all that money?

Well, Vail took all that money it was making and invested it in its people, right? Exactly. Vail etc aimed at three things: RE development to make more money, sticking it in the piggy bank and increasing capacity to allow even more customers and profit. “If people will tolerate a 40 minute line for a fixed grip triple, we can put in a high speed 6 pack, and quadruple the number of people, wait time is still 40 minutes, and we call it a better guest experience!” Well that's why everything tracks out by 10am instead of 1pm. Powder panic people!

RE

Real estate development, property management, and resort services all had bigger profit margins, but eventually real estate became hard. It didn’t dry up so much as available real estate got developed and the USFS wouldn’t let ski areas expand a ton of new base areas which would open up real estate.

Now what is a ski company to do with this pile of cash?

So if you don’t have to put your profits into RE dev, what to do with piles of cash? Vail bought a few isolated big ski resorts and a ton of same type of smaller ski hills they killed off in the pass wars that survived in small markets in order to lock those skiers into the Vail product for their yearly destination ski trip to bigger mountains. Bam! Instead of a regional monopoly, Vail became a national monopoly and an international player, and Alterra jumped in on the model by gathering investors to make it a Duopoly.

This kicked off in 1996 when Vail buys out Ralston Purina’s mountains. What happened on the ground in ski communities in the last 25 years?

Everyone knows housing prices have outpaced wage growth nationally. This effect is magnified in ski communities with accelerated RE prices vs even more stagnated wages.

Why with the wages? You have continuous wage depression by Vail running things like an old mining company town, you work for us for cheap and you get a ski pass and employee housing. You lose your job, you lose your pass, and your housing. Meanwhile local companies pay more than Vails depressed wages, but not that much more.

RE also had aggravating factors like STRs and a slowly increasing remote worker population. So Vail will come in and offer some land not suitable for ski condos that they bought 30 years ago super cheap, but want the taxpayers to fund the development of more employee housing… for Vail. The ship creaks as it sails on into the storm.

RONA!

Into this perfect storm comes COVID, the great resignation, and the absolute flood of people relocating from the cities to the mountain communities while still pulling city wages, or bringing equivalent RE transactions by dumping a Manhattan apartment or SF townhouse that equates to a decent house or nice condo in ski country. Oh yea, and you aren’t allowed to evict people who don’t pay rent.

We can’t hire anyone?

Well here is the perfect storm for the mountains. The remote workers who have deep pockets either buy or just rent a STR for longer. The remote workers who aren’t top tier pay are bitching because they can’t find seasonal housing in the ski town, so tell me where the Wendy’s drive through worker making $20/hr is gonna live? Where is the nurse making $35/hr gonna live if they can afford a 1br rent but just can’t find a place because they are competing with techbros? Those changes happened like lightening and building new rent controlled units won't keep up with this flood.

The end of the middle and lower class mountain dweller:

Living in ski country has always been about tradeoffs, making your life compatible and trading comforts for quality of life. That’s why so many who live up in ski country work 3 jobs instead of one or live in a small place instead of owning a SFH in suburbia where the good jobs were. But now, you have a huge population who doesn’t have to make that choice. They have all the assets and salaries associated with not living in ski country in the before times, but they can live in ski country. You have another class resident, the vanlifer, who make it impossible for the seasonal locals who 10 years ago used to live in their trucks in the summer to save up for their downpayment on a 1br someday.

The times have changed and it has fucked the people who built their lives around the mountain dream in the old system. It will never be the same, and that is frustrating. It is has been rough and it is not suddenly going to become smooth. I don’t know what the future looks like.

Reduced Workforce Was Predictable – What was the Business Strategy?

All the above was pretty obvious. What to do? Why sell more passes of course! Why? Because people want an escape and locals don’t matter, but profits do! So huge revenue for Vail etc, But it turns out if you can’t even spin your lifts, the customers do get irritated. And it also turns out that the social media megaphone that lets outraged people gnash their teeth about parking lot attendants not making 25/hr also lets people get together on more legitimate topics of outrage!

Switching to Ikon won't solve these problems, but Fuck Vail!

-A 20 year VR passholder and local

[fastfred]

well said summit pretty much nailed all of the issues that have come together all at once

then you have hundreds of people like me going why don't I cash in a gtfo
if it wasn't for such a perfect little place where everyone is friendly and happy I'd get out
and the d bag who fucked with my truck yesterday saw his sitting at city market an hour later and got him back "I suck dick" you can write poems in mag chloride and mud

[Bunion 2020]

Well done Summit.

[altasnob]

We, as Americans are to blame for this. Who couldn't see this coming? We have allowed the USFS to continue to lease land to private companies that are more real estate development firms and investment banks than they are ski area operators. What should have happened, 40 years ago, is the public demand that the USFS alter their entire philosophy on leasing the public's land for for-profit, recreational, purposes. Rather than play a hands off role, the USFS (as land steward) should have demanded they be more involved in the private company leasee's business model. And that model should focus on sustainability, not profits.

There is no reason this could not be accomplished today. We just need enough people to recognize this problem. This is not some anti-capatalism rant. It's asking that that the landlord, who answers to all of us, start giving a fuck on how the tenant is using the property.

(note, all of the above only applies to ski areas on USFS land, which is the vast majority of large ski areas in the West).